Summary:
- Sweden plans to close its Monrovia embassy by August 2026, ending a four-year, $US2.4 million project that has supported the Amplifying Rights Network, a coalition of 10 civil society organizations working on sexual and reproductive health and rights in Liberia.
- Network members say the first losses are likely to be felt in rural counties, where mentorship and sexuality education programs may shrink sharply after May, reducing access in communities already facing high rates of teen pregnancy and limited access to contraception.
- The cut comes as U.S. health support to Liberia has also narrowed under a new five-year compact that civil society groups say does not replace lost support for sexual and reproductive health and rights.
By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives
S.D. COOPER ROAD, Paynesville – At a Valentine’s Day gathering earlier this year, a teenage girl stood before her peers. She described a boy in her community who had been giving her gifts and telling her she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She was flattered by his attention, according to one of the club leaders, and was thinking about loving him.
But then she joined this club. Paramount Young Women Initiative is a school-based mentoring program in about 35 high schools across Liberia. It teaches girls about menstruation, puberty, teen pregnancy, consent, and coercion. It also builds bodily autonomy, confidence, and leadership. After joining it, the teenage girl saw her suitor in a new light.
“She got to know that the beauty he was applauding was because he had an ulterior motive,” said Hawa Wilson, a sexual and reproductive health mentor.
The girl stayed in school and was determined to finish. For Wilson, it was one more example of the kind of intervention that has played out for the last four years in schools across Montserrado, Bong, Grand Bassa, and Margibi counties, many of them places where students would otherwise receive no sex education at all.
Now, Wilson said, she is no longer sure how many more of those meetings there will be.
The Swedish government is the sole backer of the $US2.4 million Amplifying Rights Network. Wilson leads the Paramount Young Women Initiative, one of 10 civil society organizations working on sexual and reproductive health and rights in Liberia through the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education. The project ends this month ahead of the Swedish government’s withdrawal from Liberia. “With all the work we have done around sexual and reproductive health and rights, we are worried,” Wilson said.
In a public statement, the Swedish embassy said the decision was “a consequence of reduced funding in its overall budget for development cooperation” and “not in any way linked to policies or events in Liberia.” Liberia is among four African countries losing Swedish bilateral support – the others are Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique.
The Swedish government has said the move will allow it to divert support to Ukraine in its fight against the invasion by Russia, now in its fourth year. The Swedish government said the move was necessary now that the Trump administration in the United States has slashed its support. Many Swedes see Russian expansion in its region as a serious threat.
For reproductive health advocates, the closure threatens infrastructure that has taken years to build. In a country where comprehensive sex education is taught in very few schools, they said the network has become a key source of information about bodies, rights, consent, contraception, and protection, especially for young people outside Monrovia.
Without that education, experts said, girls in Liberia face a range of challenges. Liberia’s last Demographic and Health Survey, done in 2020, found that one in every three girls under 19 was either pregnant or already mothers- one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the world. When girls have children, they are far less likely to return to school, trapping them and their children in cycles of poverty.
Many of them will not survive. The World Bank recorded a maternal mortality rate of 638 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023, again one of the highest in the world. Thousands more are left with fistulas, infertility, and other injuries that will plague them for life. Maternal mortality has been improving in recent years. Now, experts worry gains will be lost.
The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education estimates that 80 percent of young people under 20 lack access to sex education and contraception, meaning they don’t know how they can get pregnant or how to prevent it. About seven in 10 teenage girls have no access to mass media, the only place where reproductive health information in Liberia is shared. This project has changed that.
“Sexual and reproductive health and rights have gone from being taboo in Liberia to being discussed as a political issue in the media and among decision-makers,” said Aminata Kamara-Sneh, the Association’s coordinator in Monrovia. “When Sweden’s funding and the protection that international support entails disappear, sexual and reproductive health rights risks once again becoming a taboo subject.”
Sweden has played a significant role in Liberia. The small European country of just 10 million people has been the second biggest donor country since it reopened its embassy after the war in 2010. Over the years, the Swedish embassy has supported work on governance, election monitoring, human rights, and civil society. (Disclosure: The Swedish embassy supports New Narratives.) In the sexual and reproductive health and rights space, advocates said its contribution has been foundational: allowing smaller organizations to operate with more consistency and reach than they could sustain on their own.
Since 2021, the Amplifying Rights Network has linked organizations working in schools, rural clinics, and community health programs across Liberia. The network developed a manual on sex education and sexual and gender-based violence. Wilson said her organization uses it across four counties, where mentors work in pairs and visit schools that otherwise offer no formal sex education.
In 2023, the network organized Liberia’s first national conference on sexual and reproductive health and rights, a three-day gathering at the ministerial complex in Monrovia that drew 700 participants, including the former vice president, the U.N. special rapporteur on health, and youth activists from across the country. A second national conference followed in October last year.
When the Mentors Go Home
Wilson said the first thing likely to shrink is rural reach. Her organization has deployed two to three mentors per county, including to districts outside county capitals. After May, she expects that number to drop to just one.
“For rural communities,” she said, “that mentor is just going to be based directly within the county capital. There are whole districts we will no longer regularly reach.”
Those are the same areas where the consequences of reduced access can be most severe. Lelia Precious-Dolo, executive director of Help a Mother and Newborn Initiative, said her organization works with adolescent mothers, many of whom became pregnant after growing up with limited access to information and services that might have helped them avoid it. Without support, they are also at high risk of becoming pregnant again.
“Our model is simple,” Dolo said. “We give girls information they can use. Then we link them to health facilities and follow up.”
Dolo said the barriers these girls face are many: Some are abandoned by families when they become pregnant. Many cannot afford childcare and so cannot return to school. Health facilities, even when they are reachable, often do not have the contraceptives they need. Stigma from teachers and communities can further isolate them, making help harder to seek, even where services exist.
“You will see a 17-year-old girl having two or three children,” Dolo said. “Because she has the first one, nobody corrects her or supports her. She must depend on a man. She goes back again.”
Kamara-Sneh said many young people’s first sexual experiences are forced, which she linked in part to the lack of places where the idea of consent is openly taught.
New American Deal Leaves Sexual and Reproductive Health at the Margins
Sweden’s exit comes as development funding is tightening more broadly. In early 2025, changes in U.S. foreign assistance under the new administration of President Donald Trump sharply reduced annual health support to Liberia, from roughly $70 million to an estimated $25 million per year under a new five-year Health Compact.
Civil society advocates said sexual and reproductive health and rights are not a priority. Kamara-Sneh cited a concern about the U.S. abortion-related funding restrictions, including the Helms Amendment and the expanded Global Gag Rule, restricting US funds from being used for sexual and reproductive health.
“Women in rural areas, young people in rural communities, access to contraceptives, access to health facilities for pregnant women and girls, there are going to be a whole lot of issues and risks,” Wilson said
Taken together, advocates said, the U.S. pullback and Sweden’s exit are creating a vacuum in health and rights work that no remaining partner is ready to fill.
Women’s Rights Advocates Call on Government to Replace Support for Sex Education
Civil society groups are now urging the government to treat sex education as a state priority to reduce the burden on healthcare resources caused by preventable pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and related complications.
“Government should not overlook what we do,” Wilson said. “We are doing it to complement government efforts. They should be intentional about mobilizing local resources — from the country’s own resources — to infuse them into the national budget. We have the health sector. We have education. We have justice. These are areas where government should be intentional about spending money.”
Liberia is also under pressure from commitments it has already made. The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals include targets on gender equality, education, and health. With the deadline now four years away, advocates said the gap between Liberia’s commitments and its progress could widen if current funding trends continue.
Back at the Valentine’s Day gathering, after the girl spoke up, others stood up too. One had run for vice president of her school’s student council and won. At one school, an entire student council had once been swept by girls who had passed through the mentoring program.
Wilson said that crucial empowerment of Liberia’s girls now lies primarily in the hands of the Liberian government, which has the power to champion them and build on what the Swedish taxpayer has started.
This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. A private donor funded this reporting. The donor had no say in the story’s content.
